Your Coffee By The Numbers: The Sprudge Survey Res...

Last week, we found a survey of caffeine consumption habits created by Amerisleep, a mattress manufacturer. The results were interesting but got us to wondering about how the numbers would change when only looking at folks who are really into coffee, more specifically the sort of person that reads a coffee publication (and would fill out a survey by that publication). So we made our own little survey, which we bring the results of to you now.

Of the hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds!) of total respondents, a whopping 96.4% said they drink coffee daily, with only 3.2% staying they drink coffee every now and again. These numbers fall much more in line with what I expected from coffee consumers than the 79/21 split of daily/every now and again drinkers from the previous survey. Inexplicably, there were two people in our survey who both said they never drink coffee (wut?) but wish they drank more and drink coffee primarily because they like the taste. I don’t know who they are, but I feel for them.

Our survey didn’t yield quite the same amount in terms of dollars spent yearly on coffee. Initially, our first thought was that this is the result of the survey being skewed toward those in the coffee industry—which it is, to the tune of 53.5%—but when we broke out the results into coffee professionals and non-coffee professionals, the numbers were still considerably lower than the $2,000 and $1,410 peaks from the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups, respectively.

Interestingly enough, we found that, contrary to the findings in the other survey combined with the general thinking about spending from coffee professionals, that spending increased as coffee professionals got older.

Our current leading theory to reconcile the spending disparity between the two surveys is that, while you would expect coffee geeks to spend more on coffee, they are perhaps more likely to make coffee for themselves at home, thus—unintentionally or otherwise—driving down the overall cost of their habit.

Overall, respondents drank on average 2.88 cups of coffee a day. Amongst those professions with 10 or more respondents (though quick shout out to the one Americano-loving funeral director who consumes six cups a day. We see you), Wholesale and Retail reign supreme with 3.4 cups daily, beating out even coffee professionals, who came in second with 3.1.

Our study found that, by and large, everyone is happy with the amount of coffee they consume, 81.6% of all surveyed to be exact. For those not satisfied, the numbers basically flip depending upon whether or not you are in the coffee industry. Only 6.9% of coffee professionals wish they drank more, compared to the 12.7% of non-coffee professionals. Unsurprisingly, 11.7% of coffee professionals—who often have to drink an excess of coffee due to dialing in—wish they drank less; only 5.4% of non-coffee professionals had a similar sentiment.

So what did we learn from this new survey? One, numbers are fun. Two, Amerisleep’s graphics department is far better than my own. And three, predicting coffee drinking and spending habits based on things like profession, age, or gender is a fool’s errand (luckily Sprudge has a fool helming the news desk). It bolsters the already well-known idea that coffee—the second-most traded commodity in the world, trailing only oil—is universally loved and appreciated in ways that don’t neatly lend to some sort of analytic modeling. You may work as a barista but your grandma may still drink twice as much coffee as you do. Or maybe you love and appreciate coffee more than your coworker, but you buy one $20 bag a week and they hit up the Bux twice a day at $5 a pop.

Love is love. Drink as much (and spend as much on) coffee as makes you happy. Don’t worry about what the numbers say. Your coffee habits are unique unto you. Just like everyone else’s.